Forty years ago, Webber was absurdly popular, Britain's number one cultural export of the '80s. It was an Ed Sheeran-ish popularity: an insanely prolific hitmaker, yes, but he never commanded a fraction of the critical adulation of, say, Stephen Sondheim or Kander & Ebb.
This is not a good time to be an Andrew Lloyd Webber hater, with the musical theatre legend on track to be almost as popular as he was in the '80s. Jamie Lloyd's Rachel Zegler-starring revival was the year's most talked about show, a first ever UK revival of Cats was announced to much anticipation; over in New York Lloyd's Sunset Boulevard revival took the Tonys by storm and critics were wowed by hipster off-Broadway Cats revival The Jellicle Ball.
Four years ago the musical theatre titan was at low ebb: declaring he'd rather go to prison than allow his extremely mid new musical Cinderella to open with social distancing was not be any stretch of the imagination his finest hour. There has been no new musical since then, although him and Tim Rice have written the songs for this year's Birmingham Rep Christmas production, and a full scale new one called The Illusionist is now in the works.
Much is unrecognizable about the Broadway revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Sunset Boulevard" at the St. James Theatre, featuring radical changes to the score and production.
